Aristocratic Redoubt

<i>Aristocratic Redoubt: The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office on the Eve of the First World War</i> is a study of the nobility who served in the foreign office prior to World War I. Following the lead of historians who are reexamining pre-industrial elites in England and Germany Godsey deals with such facets of aristocratic life as education wealth religion and ethnicity. He contends that although the pre-war aristocracy has been stereotyped as frivolous and decadent the Austro-Hungarian nobility and thus the monarchy in fact had great staying power. This work is a social history of the bureaucracy of the Ballhausplatz primarily in the decade leading up to 1914 though it provides a thorough overview of the service during the entire Dualist period.